Remove orphan process detection from health check

[claudio-pi]

Summary

• Removed _check_orphan_processes() function (~70 lines) from health-check.sh
• Removed its invocation in the healthy-service code path
• Removed the orphan check test from health-check.bats

Why

The orphan process killer is no longer needed:

• Subagents now run as native Claude Task tools (not background processes)
• CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_BACKGROUND_TASKS=1 prevents background task spawning
• KillMode=mixed in systemd kills child processes when the service stops
• The function was already disabled during a previous PoC and had known limitations (couldn't block absolute paths, pkill -f variants)

Test plan

• All 16 health-check.bats tests pass
• Verify health check runs correctly via cron after merge

[gemini-code-assist]

Summary of Changes

Hello @claudio-pi, I'm Gemini Code Assist¹! I'm currently reviewing this pull request and will post my feedback shortly. In the meantime, here's a summary to help you and other reviewers quickly get up to speed!

This pull request streamlines the health check system by eliminating the orphan process detection mechanism. This removal is justified by architectural changes, such as subagents now running as native Claude Task tools and the use of CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_BACKGROUND_TASKS=1, which prevent background task spawning. Additionally, KillMode=mixed in systemd ensures child processes are terminated when the service stops, rendering the previous orphan process killer redundant and improving system efficiency by removing unnecessary checks.

Highlights

• Orphan Process Detection Removal: The _check_orphan_processes() function, its invocation in the healthy-service code path, and its corresponding test have been entirely removed from the health check system.
• Documentation Updates: CHANGELOG.md, EXPERIMENTS.md, and README.md have been updated to reflect the removal of the orphan process detection mechanism.

Changelog

• CHANGELOG.md
  • Removed Orphan process detection from health check — no longer needed; subagents run as native Task tools with CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_BACKGROUND_TASKS=1

Activity

• CISO approved the changes, confirming that compensating controls like KillMode=mixed and the environment variable are sufficient.
• Tech Writer's feedback was addressed by naming the specific environment variable in EXPERIMENTS.md and adding a CHANGELOG entry.
• Bash Expert confirmed the clean removal of the code without breaking control flow or leaving dangling references.

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[cubic-dev-ai]

No issues found across 5 files

Confidence score: 5/5

• Automated review surfaced no issues in the provided summaries.
• No files require special attention.

[gemini-code-assist]

Code Review

This pull request cleanly removes the orphan process detection functionality, which is no longer needed due to architectural changes. The code removal is straightforward, and the corresponding updates to documentation and tests are accurate. I have one minor suggestion to improve formatting consistency in the newly added EXPERIMENTS.md file. Overall, this is a good simplification of the codebase.